Thursday, June 16, 2011

TEPCO was running the test of the entire contaminated water treatment system since 12:20AM JST, June 16, but the test has been halted because of the leak found in one of the cesium absorption towers after 19 hours of running the test. The company was planning to run the test with the low contamination water for 30 to 40 hours before the full operation of the system with the high contamination water.

It looks to be part of the Kurion system which uses a series of towers filled with zeolite to absorb radioactive cesium.

TEPCO disclosed on June 16 that there was a leak in one of the subsystems during the test run of the entire water treatment system that will treat high contamination water at Fukushima I Nuclear Power Plant. The system was shut down automatically. According to TEPCO, it may take at least half a day to identify the location of the leak and repair. It is increasingly likely that the full-scale operation of the water treatment system, which is scheduled to start on June 17, will be delayed.

The leak was found in one of the cylindrical equipment to absorb radioactive cesium. The alarm sounded off at 7:20PM JST [on June 16] and the system was shut down automatically. At 8:00PM, the workers went in and visually confirmed the leaked water 30 centimeter deep inside the metal box that houses the cylinder, 90 centimeter in diameter and 2.3 meter in height. The water had spilled outside the box, too.

原因について東電は「詳しくは調査しないと分からない」としている。

TEPCO said the detailed investigation was needed to figure out what had caused the leak.

7
comments:

Not good news.The system requires some pressure to force the water through the cesium adsorbing cartridges, plus there are lots of joints involved. Some of them will inevitably leak, as we are seeing. TEPCO will probably need to plan the maintenance accordingly, because this is not going to get dramatically better over time. Obviously, the plant will leak, so TEPCO has to adjust the facility to be able to flush that water back to a collection point for reinjection into the process. This may take some more time, maybe set up a sprinkler system over the plant to flush any leakage.

Not related but:This an image from 2011-06-11 http://www.woespana.es/daten/weathernews/fukushima/webcam/2011/06/11/09.jpgThis is another one from 2011-06-12:http://www.woespana.es/daten/weathernews/fukushima/webcam/2011/06/12/05.jpgA square structure (reactor building?) seems to have dissapeared!

1200 tons a day is looking less and less likely this is probably going to be a reoccurring theme too. I can foresee major issues when they start running "hot" and I doubt it will be a half day fix. Let's hope the automatic shutoff system never fails.

"Lockbaum said there was more fuel damaged at Fukushima than in all prior accidents combined and the only good news, he said, was that the destroyed reactor containment vessels allowed pathways for helicopters and fire trucks to put water on spent fuel pools".

Blanch suggested that the cables at many nuclear plants had never been approved for moist conditions and, as most plants were along rivers or other bodies of water, were often submerged in water for extended periods of time.You can have a minor accident that causes a demand for power for pumps to cool reactors, a need for high current flow,” Blanch said, “and because they have been submerged they could fail, disabling important electrical systems.”

“True story,” Gunderson said, “two weeks before Fukushima my wife asked me where the next nuclear disaster would be. I said, I don’t know, but it will be a Mark I.”

"Not only is this nuclear establishment seeking to make it look like the Fukushima catastrophe has not happened—going so far as to claim that there will be “no health effects” as a result of it—but it is moving forward on a “nuclear renaissance,” its scheme to build more nuclear plants.

Indeed, next week in Washington, a two-day “Special Summit on New Nuclear Energy” will be held involving major manufacturers of nuclear power plants—including General Electric, the manufacturer of the Fukushima plants—and U.S. government officials".

I'm generally pro-nuc, but this is just getting to be embarrassing. Why didn't they use double-piping from the oil industry? Any leaks would be contained. From a Japanese company none-the-less: http://www.asahi-america.com/products-environmental-piping.htm

About my coverage of Japan Earthquake of March 11

I am Japanese, and I not only read Japanese news sources for information on earthquake and the Fukushima Nuke Plant but also watch press conferences via the Internet when I can and summarize my findings, adding my observations.

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Well, this was, until March 11, 2011. Now it is taken over by the events in Japan, first earthquake and tsunami but quickly by the nuke reactor accident. It continues to be a one-person (me) blog, and I haven't even managed to update the sidebars after 5 months... Thanks for coming, spread the word.------------------This is an aggregator site of blogs coming out of SKF (double-short financials ETF) message board at Yahoo.

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